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Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs Microsoft Azure Application Gateway comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudflare
Sponsored
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
CDN (1st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (1st), Managed DNS (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th)
Cloudflare Web Application ...
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Web Application Firewall (WAF) (6th)
Microsoft Azure Application...
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Application Delivery Controllers (ADC) (4th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (3rd)
 

Featured Reviews

Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
It's easy to set up because you point the DNS to it, and it's working in under 15 minutes
Cloudflare is highly scalable. Cloudflare is a system with a web portal that the end users like me see. It's a console where we can adjust the DNS, caching, and security features all in that console. Cloudflare owns thousands of servers across the world that cache the data. It's a powerful solution. When clients sign up for Cloudflare, they're getting this monster content delivery network, security, and a web application firewall in one. It's all rolled into one, and it's massive. Unless you have your website hosted on a massive hosting provider, there's no way that you can deliver the amount of data that Cloudflare can provide to the end users. If you have static content, there's no way that you can ever match what Cloudflare can do. Obviously, there are competitors to Cloudflare that do the same, but I'm saying other types of solutions. Let's say you go with F5. Great, that's on-prem. That's in your colo. You can't deliver as much data to the internet as you can with a CDN. You don't have to spend $20,000 on a net scaler, F5, or whatever Cisco's selling now. You don't have to buy that. You pay them $50 a month or $150 a month. It's totally worth it because even in five years, you'll never get the performance value, not just the actual ROI. You have to consider how much throughput you can get with Cloudflare.
SachidDoshi - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers a huge signature repository and is superiorly effective in mitigating DDoS attacks
The solution's learning curve can still be further reduced, which presently stands at two or three months. The product has a custom rule set that users can modify and manifest as needed. The vendor can probably shorten the learning curve using cutting-edge technologies like AI. The solution provider can also work around the web applications and identify the toolset that needs to be implemented to deploy the solution in less time. The vendor has launched a SASE product that can function with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall, but many improvements are needed in terms of features, such as the web filtering feature, and CASB has not yet been added.
Shehzad Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers time and cost savings with integration, but user interface needs improvement
We are using it for our internal application development. We are testing those features of application gateways. We are integrating it with our solutions, application, Azure Application Gateway Microsoft has a vast variety of tools, and it blends very well. It provides a range of services, so it…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is very good at mitigating threats."
"Centralized, full-featured DNS."
"The overall experience with Cloudflare is positive, with a rating of eight out of ten."
"The solution automatically detects and responds to certain types of traffic based on geolocation."
"The simplicity of the overall dashboard makes it a great product for a user like me who has less understanding of the internet than a developer or other more technical people. It gives me peace of mind. I also love the easy customization of the Page Rules."
"Its ease of integration with Office 365 and the fact that it's a good product compared to what I had before"
"Cloudflare DNS is widely used, and it's good for websites. If we use Cloudflare DNS and update one record, it updates in their office instantly."
"When using services like Heroku, Cloudflare is very useful for CNAME flattening. I also use it for their end-to-end SSL with TLS authentication on nginx for securing servers."
"Caching is the most valuable feature of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall."
"Does a good job preventing web application attacks."
"Cloudflare WAF provides protection through rules and functionalities like Cloudflare's SDRAP."
"The integration of Cloudflare with Cloud Suite is its most valuable feature."
"It is a SaaS solution unlike much of the competition."
"It protects web applications efficiently."
"Some of the most valuable features of Cloudflare Web Application Firewall include its DNS zone setup and the zero trust policy."
"The security features are valuable. The particular feature we use is called OWASP."
"It has a filter available, although we are not currently using it because it is not part of our requirements. But it is a good option and when it becomes part of our requirements we will definitely use it."
"The production is a valuable feature."
"Load balancing and web application firewall features are the most valuable."
"The solution integrates different applications and APIs securely, enhancing overall security and network optimization."
"I find Application Gateway’s WAF module valuable because it helps prevent layer 7 attacks."
"It is a scalable solution...The installation phase of Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is very easy."
"The solution has built-in rules that reduce alerts and are easy to configure."
"The simplicity of the solution and its ability to integrate easily with others are its most valuable aspects."
 

Cons

"Cloudflare should add more documentation and pricing to the cloud version."
"If they improve on the placement of their data centers, it would be better. I'm living in a remote area. I would like to connect to them without any kind of lag."
"It should have easier documentation for the configuration. It's very technical and people who aren't technical should also be able to do the configuration."
"It would be good if Cloudflare could have more servers for better traffic routing or an increase in the traffic routed. This is what I'd like to improve in Cloudflare."
"I think the APIs are a little bit hard for us to work with. The APIs could be more open so that we could integrate better with our SolarWinds or our monitoring solution."
"For the free and Pro plans, Cloudflare could use a simple bot to provide information to users. This would improve support, especially for less advanced users who utilize the free components."
"The product needs to improve its automation."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"If they add logs history within the Cloudflare offering, that would be a great benefit."
"They have some limitations with third-party integrations."
"The dashboard could be more user-friendly."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"The platform's control features related to real-time authentication and response time need improvement."
"The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available."
"There could be an option to duplicate the cluster to maintain the consistency of rules."
"The learning curve was steep initially."
"The solution has many limitations. You cannot upgrade the VPN to the application gateway. So I started with version one, which has limited capabilities, and they provided version two. And unfortunately, I cannot upgrade from v one to v two like other services. So I have to decommission the version one and create a new one with version two. Also the version one was complex with the certificates uploading the SQL certificates."
"The product's performance should be better."
"The support can be improved when you are configuring the system rules. The Disaster Recovery feature can be added in the next release. The price of the solution can be reduced a bit."
"The solution doesn’t support wildcard-based and regular expression-based rules."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway is harder to manage than Imperva. It is not intuitive and stable compared to other products."
"The increased security that we are considering is because of some of the things that the security team has brought to our attention. They have pointed out that we would most likely require a better web application firewall than Azure Application Gateway."
"Scalability can be an issue."
"One of the challenges we faced was the solution does not support any other PCP protocols apart from HTTP and HTTPS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost primarily depends on the size of the organization."
"That is one of the great features. I was able to access the majority of the features and services for free."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"So far I use free tier and happy with it. You can subscribe to business package if needed."
"The tool is a premium product, so it is very expensive."
"The pricing depends on the usage, but the cheapest would be around 5,000 USD a month."
"The product's pricing is minimal compared to other products."
"When you compare Cloudflare DNS to other solutions, such as Akamai, the price is reasonable."
"The annual licensing fee is $10,000 USD."
"What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing? I believe the pricing is not the best, but it's reasonable and acceptable. We also use the McAfee system in parallel. In terms of pricing, its okay - not great, but not bad either. It falls in the middle, which is acceptable. In terms of support licensing, last time, we were searching for a solution, and we considered products from resellers rather than directly from the cloud provider. However, the pricing we encountered was exceptionally high. As a result, we are inclined to select support from the reseller."
"We pay $210 per month for CloudFlare WAF."
"Cloudflare offers different types of subscriptions for businesses, enterprises, and personal users, and the pricing is negotiable."
"It is not too pricey."
"The solution's pricing option needs to be more transparent for enterprise clients."
"Cloudflare Web Application Firewall is more affordable than other solutions."
"It starts at $20 and can easily go up to $200 monthly"
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"We use the tool's basic subscription. Its licensing costs are monthly."
"Microsoft Azure Application Gateway has less price than other application gateway solutions."
"The product is expensive. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is not complex. It is not expensive from our point of view."
"The tool's pricing model is pay-as-you-go."
"The product is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
Cloudflare. We are moving from Akamai prolexic to Cloudflare. Cloudflare anycast network outperforms Akamai static GR...
Which would you choose - Cloudflare DNS or Quad9?
Cloudflare DNS is a very fast, very reliable public DNS resolver. It is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service...
What do you like most about Cloudflare?
Cloudflare offers CDN and DDoS protection. We have the front end, API, and database in how you structure applications.
What do you like most about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product has a valuable security control functionality.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
Cloudflare is cheaper compared to Azure WAF, which I have considered before.
What needs improvement with Cloudflare Web Application Firewall?
The product can improve by having more multitenancy capability, which is currently not available. This improvement wo...
What's the difference between Azure Front Door and Application Gateway?
We found Azure Front Door to be easily scaled and very stable. The implementation is very fast and Microsoft provides...
How does AWS WAF compare to Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether Amazon’s Web Service Web Application Firewall or Microsoft...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Application Gateway?
Application Gateway automatically redirects unwanted users and takes care of the security aspect. It also handles the...
 

Also Known As

Cloudflare DNS
Cloudflare WAF
Azure Application Gateway, MS Azure Application Gateway
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Trusted by over 9,000,000 Internet Applications and APIs, including Nasdaq, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Steve Madden, OkCupid, Cisco, Quizlet, Discord and more.
crunchbase, udacity, marketo, okcupid, zendesk
Lilly, AccuWeather, AIRFRANCE, Honeywell
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudflare Web Application Firewall vs. Microsoft Azure Application Gateway and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.